Talking Points Memo managing editor rips into Scott Walker for his attempt to “clarify” his remarks on the Boy Scouts ban on gay adults. “I’m confident our readers are sophisticated enough to see that for what it is, part of the broader softening of rhetoric over gay rights from Walker and other elected conservatives, but a softening that is opportunistic, inconsistently applied, disingenuous, and which, in this case, Walker bumbled.”

Former NY governor David Paterson says backing gay marriage in ’09 cost him the support of the black community. “My popularity in the black community, when I became governor, was 91 percent and by the beginning of 2009 my popularity in the black community had dropped to 54 percent because there has been a resistance to marriage equality such as there might be right here.”

The Atlantic‘s Molly Ball on what other activists can learn from the fight for marriage equality. “The marriage campaign’s major innovation was fusing litigation with a political campaign, using lawsuits and state-level political victories to reinforce one another. The combination worked to create an impression of momentum even as the tide of public opinion gradually turned.”

The earthquake that will devastate the west coast. “In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America.”

Nick Jonas loves his gay fans. “There’s a thing of recognizing that you have gay fans, as a male artist. I was speaking to some of my very close gay friends as I was making the record, and they told me I should really make the effort to embrace my gay audience as it’s bigger than I might think. There should be more of it. There should be more heterosexual male artists who are comfortable to attract a gay audience and do it in a way that’s authentic. With me, it comes from a very genuine and loving place.”